


Options

by Severina



Series: The Condemnedverse [3]
Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: tamingthemuse, Post Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-22
Updated: 2012-04-22
Packaged: 2017-11-04 03:18:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/389130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are halfway across the two-lane blacktop, heading toward the gully and then the overgrown embankment that leads to the strip mall, when Daryl spots the walker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Options

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's tamingthemuse community, for the prompt 'decay'.  
> Post Season Two. Part Three of _the condemnedverse_ series.
> 
> * * *

They are halfway across the two-lane blacktop, heading toward the gully and then the overgrown embankment that leads to the strip mall, when Daryl spots the walker.

The thing was a doctor, once. Maybe. Green scrubs covered with dried blood, some kind of gore-encrusted ID badge still dangling from the pocket, metal clip swinging and catching the light. Doctor or nurse, maybe, and they ain't passed no hospitals since Atlanta, not even a goddamn clinic, which makes him wonder how long this thing has been shambling along, right arm dangling in a mass of ripped tendons and exposed bone, looking for people to rip into with those rotted teeth. Looking for _his_ people.

Doesn't matter. It ain't gonna get the chance. It's just a thing now, something to be put down like a rabid dog.

The kid hasn't seen it yet. Daryl clamps a hand gently over Glenn's shoulder; waits until Glenn stops, then indicates the walker with a jut of his chin. He sets his stance, raises the crossbow to sight… and that's when four more of the motherfuckers pop up from behind the overturned semi.

Shit.

Daryl eases into a crouch behind a sedan, pulls the kid down with him. When Glenn gestures to the machete in his hand, raises his eyebrows enquiringly, he considers it. The kid's quick and light on his feet, and five ain't too many for the both of them to handle. He's about to nod approval when he hears the tell-tale shuffle; clamps his fingers down on Glenn's bicep instead and slowly, carefully opens the driver's side door to block them from sight just before two more walkers appear in the south lane. Their lane.

Sometimes hiding is the best option. Years of living with Merle and his old man taught him that.

Daryl glances once at the mummified body behind the wheel, vaguely aware of Glenn huddling in at his side and pulling the collar of his sweat-stained T-shirt over his mouth. The smell wafting from the open door is sickly-sweet, like peaches when they've gone over, like the jars bursting in the sweltering heat that summer when the temperature climbed and climbed, boiling everyone's brains, and not even his ma stepping in could stop the fist or the switch. 

The walkers smell wet, raw. Like venison not properly butchered, like Merle drunk and tweaking and fucking up the job and the old man laughing and clapping a hand around the back of Merle's neck and the two of them lurching around in the dirt. 

Daryl rolls his shoulders, clears his head, listens to the slap-stumble of the footsteps getting closer. The kid is pressed in tight enough that he can feel Glenn take a deep breath, glances once over his shoulder to get him to ease back a bit so he can slide the crossbow onto his back. He meets Glenn's eyes then, the kid's looking wide and scared but determined. There's about a hundred things he thinks he could say, but he ain't the man to say any of them. All he can do is nod.

Then the walkers are upon them and he is up, his knife already unsheathed and arcing toward the closest, finely honed blade piercing the thing's chin like butter, sinking through the decayed jaw and finding home in whatever's left of the thing's brain. It sags against him and he pushes it off, turns in time to see Glenn's machete slice off the top of the skull of the second, brackish blood and grey matter and other things, wiggling squirming things that should never be inside a fucking human being, splattering in an putrid spray across the windows of the car. 

He lets out a breath and that's when the third one grabs him.

One bony, skeletal hand flails at his arm, but the thing goes for his neck, and he hears the rotted teeth scrape against the bow, feels the walker's putrid breath skate across his collarbone. It's the crossbow that saves him, but really it's Glenn, who takes one step to the side and is then bringing his machete down in a solid swing, cleaving into the thing's head with a _thunk_ that shakes them both. When the walker's legs give out and it slumps to the side, Glenn joins it, pulling Daryl down with him to crouch among the gore. 

"Jesus," Glenn breathes out, finally. "Jesus, Daryl."

The kid's hand is clamped to his arm, fingers digging into the flesh hard enough to leave bruises. Daryl considers shaking him off, finds he doesn't mind. Sure, Glenn's impeding his movement and all, not the best thing to be happening when you come across a mini-herd of walking dead, but he just can't seem to open his mouth to snap at him to let go. Finds his own fingers twitching, wanting to reach out and touch, too. Find that connection. Hold on tight.

He leans back on his haunches instead. "Ain't ya glad you didn't come alone?" 

"Jesus," Glenn huffs out again, but he sounds more like himself now, a weak smile playing at his lips as releases the death grip to tug off his cap and run a shaking hand through his hair. Daryl peers out from behind the open door to scan the horizon before he nods and they rise as one.

The other five walkers have stumbled down the blacktop, oblivious.

"The motel," Glenn murmurs.

"They ain't gonna leave the road," Daryl says. Hopes he sounds confident, 'cause if that group staggers into camp when he ain't there, when he's off on some fucking wild good chase with this motherfucking kid who won't get out of his goddamn brain, if that group goes after their people, Rick's boy, _Carol_ … 

He shakes his head, scowls at the kid, still staring down the road at the walkers retreating backs. "Whole shitload of trouble to go to for some goddamn _chocolate_."

"Maybe not just chocolate," Glenn says softly.

"The fuck you talking about now, Ho Chi Minh?"

"Close but no cigar, Billy Bob," Glenn says, before turning back to him with a shit-eating grin. One that Daryl finds he's got no choice but to return. _Billy Bob_. Shit. 

"Come on," he continues, clapping Daryl on the shoulder, urging him back toward the embankment. Daryl takes a quick look around before dropping to a crouch and swinging his bow back into position, following the kid between the abandoned cars to the verge. When he catches up Glenn is practically bouncing on the soles of his feet, makes a small gesture to the strip mall. 

"Come on," he says again. "I've got something to show you."


End file.
